The best prosodists alive today, such as Marcus Bales and Annie Finch, make this common, tone-deaf mistake, re: Swinburne and Poe, but if the experts are wrong, what about the rest? Metrical taste today is at the lowest state since poetry was first written, so it is probably best we keep Bales and Finch as friends in the barren metrical landscape of our Letters.

Metrical expertise has been hijacked by two things:

First, poor training in the nuts and bolts of the science itself, so often tainted by needless pedantry.

Second, the New Critics’ injunction (Robert Penn Warren’s essay “Pure and Impure Poetry” 1943) that “tension” between “metrical rhythm” and “speech rhythm” is the true measure of taste in judging metrical poetry.

This second obstacle is perhaps the most insidious, seducing even a poet as brilliant as Marcus Bales into error. The most beautiful species of rhythm, combined with the most thrilling aspects of expression, are sold short by a theory that clips the wings of rhythmical flight in the name of “speech.”

Certainly, qualities such as cogency and consistency support metrical expression. These qualities partake of all the good we mean when we refer to “speech.” But “speech rhythm” is something else quite again. And here is where the error resides: rhythm’s emphasis and rhythm’s surprise and rhythm’s art are all the poem needs in order to be wonderful, strange, new, and expressive, and “speech rhythm” is but an illusionary, accidental result.

For how can we really know what speech rhythm is?

This is one of those assumptions which exist only as that, an assumption, but not in reality— and all because the “real” aspect (everyday speech is real, isn’t it?) is accepted without reflection. The metrical poem will not admit an idea merely because it is an abstract nod to something “real.” The practice of a poem admits no hypotheticals.

We put the cart before the horse to make “speech rhythm” a notable aim or complement to the “metrical rhythm,” because speech always implies something we’ve seen before in daily conversation, and by its very nature will drag us away from metrical excitement and novelty; the aping of “speech” will always exert inhibitory pressure on the metrical muse. Obviously we don’t want to veer off into pure nonsense, but the speech should emerge almost accidentally from the metrical rhythm, which must be the primary focus. Warren’s “tension” between the two implies a balancing act, but this balancing finally dilutes and weakens rhythmical invention, which requires freedom to express, newly, terror and delight.

Let us look at some examples and see if we can detect this “tension” between speech rhythm and metrical rhythm:

So, we’ll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.

In these lovely, poignant lines it is pointless to credit “speech” for those powerful anapests; they belong to metrical perfection. Any “tension” added (I doubt any would be so bold to even try) would, even if organized to Warren’s exact specifications, weaken the poem in every respect.

What of this:

The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.
And then the lighting of the lamps.

What is interesting to notice here is that the ‘modern’ example is less like speech than the Romantic song. We might observe to an intimate acquaintace, “So we’ll go no more a-roving,” but we would never say to anyone: “The winter evening settles down with smell of steaks in passageways.” We already observed that the first example, the Byron, is a metrical tour de force, and yet, by comparison, the Byron is also more like real speech. The “speech” of Eliot’s first stanza from his Preludes pervades like one’s own consciousness whispering despairingly into one’s own ear about the sad state of actual things. The Byron, poem, too, addresses the sad state of reality, too. Both poems are melancholy, but Byron’s melancholy is heroic and elegant: “Yet we’ll go no more a-roving/by the light of the moon.” The beauty remains in the sadness. In the Eliot example, there never was any beauty; the melancholy is depressing and inevitable: “And then the lighting of the lamps.”

Iambic pentameter is heroic for physical reasons; the tetrameter has one less beat and thus it has less weight, less gravity. In a different context, “then the lighting of the lamps” could be a happy line, but the mechanics of the line in the context of Eliot’s unhappy realism highlights the mechanics itself as a dull, mechanical action.

It is easy to see that the Eliot, like the Byron, combines metrical rhythm with certain descriptive actions, for its effect. There is no “tension” between speech rhythm and metrical rhythm, per se. “Then the lighting of the lamps” certainly has speech rhythm, but the point is that “Then the lighting of the lamps” exists in the poem as metrical rhythm—there is no speech rhythm and metrical rhythm existing simultaneously; the metrical rhythm is the speech rhythm in the poem. There is no separation, and thus no comparison, and thus no “tension.” We should not confuse the banal subject matter in the Eliot with speech itself; the speaking voice is not the same as the things described by that voice. The “tension” is supposed to arise from the opposing rhythms, speech v. metrical. But the metrical and speech rhythms are one.

If you think it is impossible for qualities to blend into one in poems, listen to what Eliot observes of Swinburne: “Now, in Swinburne, the meaning and the sound are one thing.” This is quite an assertion: the meaning and the sound are one thing. And does Eliot not describe precisely the claustrophobia of the romantics dwindling into the victorians which the moderns were hell-bent on escaping? Eliot also: “When you take to pieces any verse of Swinburne, you find always that the object was not there—only the word.”

Poetry is always intensifying itself in what it is doing; the best poems never strike a balance, but pitch excessively forward, “annihilating all that’s made/To a green thought in a green shade.”

As Warren says, free verse has none of this “tension.”

But the instant we journey away from free verse towards this “tension,” we come into possession of metrical rhythm which buys up all the prose in sight; there is never a chance for reconciliation and balance, for these two, speech rhythm and metrical rhythm, are like matter and anti-matter; they demolish each other.

Annie Finch writes on Blog Harriet:

“It is my great honor and pleasure to announce here on Harriet the founding of a new national holiday. Tomorrow will be the first Dead Poets Remembrance day. Unlike my recent “Kegels for Poets” post, this one is completely for real:

Press Release

At the beginning stop of a 22-State “Dead Poets Grand Tour,” thirteen current and former State poets laureate, in cooperation with the Dead Poets Society of America, have chosen Shakespeare’s birthday to announce a new national literary holiday.

The holiday will be called the Dead Poets Remembrance Day, and will be held in locations around the nation next October 7th.

Fittingly, October 7th is the day that Edgar Allan Poe died.

“We are launching this tour in order to encourage groups of people in every state to get together on October 7th to honor our dead poets by reading at their graves,” said Walter Skold, the founder of the Dead Poets Society of America.

Along the way the Poemobile is going to visit the graves of some of the most and least-well known poets in the US, including Robert Lowell, Donald Justice, James Whitcomb Riley, Lydia Sigourney, John Trumball, Henry Timrod, Abram Ryan, and Sarah Whitman.”

Thanks for sharing this Dead Poets Society news, Annie.

I met Donald Justice a few times but I don’t know him well enough that his death has impacted my life; I would rather it not. I like to think of Donald Justice as still living. I don’t think I would want to stand at his grave, even if people were reading his poetry.

Poe, on the other hand: he’s really dead and has always been dead for all of us who are now alive.

But another thing about Poe. He didn’t just die. He was murdered, and his murder was covered up. If we’re going to use the day of Poe’s death, October 7th, to honor poets who are dead, isn’t that going to cause a lot of unrest in the land of the unliving?

I’m not a morbid person, but I do feel we should try and get to the bottom of Poe’s death, not just for the sake of Poe, but for the sake of everyone, because we’re all responsible for the cover-up of Poe’s death to a certain extent. OK, that’s a stretch. Just a few directly are, but if we add the scholars who have deliberately chosen to keep Poe-slander alive, that’s even more of us; but no, we can’t blame everybody. But I think I can say this to everyone reading this now: Every day Poe’s death remains unsolved keeps alive a curse, and most of the nine muses are not happy, not to mention Poe’s fellow citizens and all who love poetry and justice—and love a good mystery story! This one’s real, people.

Poe was an inventor and breaker of codes, he went by other names, he attended West Point, he was an athlete as a young man, he was raised in a household where Supreme Court Justices would drop by for dinner; Poe, was nothing like those ignorant myths that have grown up around in him in the wake of Griswold’s libel, spun when Poe was expiring—the opposite, in fact. Think of Poe as you know him—now think of the opposite in every respect. The opposite is much closer to the real Poe.

Poe was more inventive and influential in a dozen of his hobbies than the very talented and well-connected are in their chosen career; Poe was famous and famous for a reason, for the simple reason that he was enormously talented; (sometimes this happens,) and this famous writer was picked up by his enemies, not his friends, as always gets reported (remember: think opposite) in Baltimore, in a state of distress, and then imprisoned for 3 days with no word of his dark and dingy whereabouts leaked to any newspaper or friend, and when he mysteriously expired, a hurried burial, without an autopsy, was conducted by the same “friends” who miraculously “found him,” and 24 hours later his worst enemy was telling the world nothing about the actual death or any of its circumstances, and everything about the poet’s flawed character in Horace Greeley’sNew York Tribune.

The Poe Scholar John Evangelist Walsh has done a great service in showing Poe scholarship how it should be done: look at the persons involved, the persons who fabricated stories of Poe’s death (the cooping theory, for instance), the persons who were known to dislike Poe, the persons who had reasons to want Poe dead, the persons who had plotted against Poe while he was alive—hellooo, Horace Greeley!

Misunderstood geniuses grow on trees. Poe is that invaluable rarity: the understood genius. His output in various genres was not large; but he created templates; he did not write at length on the same thing, he did not write endlessley in the same way, but applied his genius far and wide; one is not supposed to do what he did—succeed in so many interconnected ways; anyone can write code; Poe explained code.

This investigation of Poe will open up whole new worlds: the true nature of Horace Greeley…Greeley’s secret dealings with Boss Tweed, Greeley’s negotiations with Napolean III during the Civil War…

Also, universities will attract the best history and literature students in the world by starting a new department called “Death of Poe Studies.” Do I kid? Perhaps.

It is very fitting, Annie, that the first “Dead Poets Remembrance Day” is on Shakespeare’s birthday, for Poe is truly our Shakespeare.

It is important to honor the dead and remember their poetry. But if the day of Poe’s death is going to be the hook for this—as well it should, why not?—I suggest we nudge ourselves out of our long national slumber and begin to investigate the greatest mystery and tragedy of American Letters, the life and death of Edgar Allan Poe.

Yes, there’s Christopher Woodman’s name still down there at the bottom, as if the PFoA were just waiting for him to come in again. The last time he tried was in response to Annie Finch on J.D.Salinger comin through the rye, poor body, but the comment he submitted just drew a blank. So he hasn’t tried again, though sometimes he’d like to.

Because he’s not at all happy with what’s happening at Scarriet either, and feels he might be happier back in the PFoA fold, he’s that old. True, there’s no commentary there (how many comments did you say there were last week?), but at least he wouldn’t have to compete with Marla Muse praising Bob-and-Tom for dunking a new poem a second — or listen to that awful deaf-to-English-Fox that Scarriet calls our ‘coverage’ of the big Poetry Game.

Not a parody but a travesty!

And what an irony, because Scarriet’s numbers are truly running riot! But is this really what you want, my friends? Are you here just for the beer, is that it, or are you laughing at us, at the comics and antics we offer instead of poetry?

Why are you here, in fact? To watch us self-destruct on that rock in the Rhine, or sail on for another day and more questions than answers down the river?

Lyric Poetry

Sung to the lyre, it has a certain fascination. American lyrics from Irish ballads to Emily Dickinson to Annie Finch. Whitman, that lyric maelstrom. What about Heine? Could any man write these lyrics now? Is lyric poetry only written by women today? And then there’s Dylan (Bob) with the “lowest form” of lyric: the song lyric.

Most poetry is lyric, isn’t it?

W.F.Kammann

.

………………………………….Harlem

………………………………….What happens to a dream deferred?

………………………………….Does it dry up………………………………….like a raisin in the sun?………………………………….Or fester like a sore—………………………………….And then run?………………………………….Does it stink like rotten meat?………………………………….Or crust and sugar over—………………………………….like a syrupy sweet?

“Off with her head!” the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved.

“Who cares for you?” said Alice (she had grown to her full size by this time). “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!”

At this the whole pack rose up into the air, and came flying down upon her; she gave a little scream, half of fright and half of anger, and tried to beat them off, and found herself lying on the bank, with her head in the lap of her sister, who was gently brushing away some dead leaves that had fluttered down from the trees upon her face.

~

Robert Burns and J.D.Salinger have indeed been blathered, and despite Annie Finch’s best intentions, both on Harriet and Scarriet, and our own attempt to bridge the divide as well (we were yet again deleted for our efforts!), Harriet remains in the dumps, otherwise known as denial.

Here’s what Harriet sounded like last summer:

Great to see this here, posted ipso facto in honor not only of of Salinger’s deathday but also of Robbie Burns’ birthday two days earlier–for those who don’t know, a huge national and global celebration of the poet and of Scotland. It’s one of my favorite Burns poems (I have another posted for the occasion at my blog AmericanWitch http://annieridleycranefinch.blogspot.com/)

This has one of the best singing tunes of any of his poems imho, and it is one of the relatively few where female sexuality is celebrated in its own right..it really feels like a poem that could have been written by Jenny herself, coming through dew-wet fields early in the morning to slip into bed after a night out. Thanks, Travis!

This is, in fact, a comment Annie Finch posted on Harriet a week ago in a vain effort not only to make a discussion on Burns and Salinger more relevant but to breathe some life back into the moribund Poetry Foundation community.

And did she succeed? Did she strike a chord, arouse some enthusiasm for poetry, get some rewarding feedback?

Hardly. The following is the only subsequent comment after Annie Finch’s generous, warm, independent and sexy brave effort:

And as if that weren’t 52 Pickup enough, here’s the latest spectacle in The Poetry Foundation’s limelight, yes, right up there to welcome you on Blog:Harriet’s masthead. And you bet how Travis Nichols is glad-handing the regulars — tailors, courtiers, and suckers!

FRED MOTEN5
At circle time on Thursday, Lorenzo declared that when he makes smores for Julian (which I wasn’t aware that he’d ever done) he makes them with bricks, sticks and snow.

FRED MOTEN4
A lot of it is just trying to figure out how to say something. How to read. Not how to offer a reading, or even an interpretation, but a performance of a text, in the face of its unintelligibility, as if one were forced/privileged to access some other world where representation and unrepresentability were beside the point, so that the response to the terrors and chances of history were not about calculation, not bound to replicate, even in a blunted and ethically responsible way, the horrors of speculation, where new materialities of imagination were already on the other side of the logic of equivalence.

Remember when we read together in November, and afterwards you asked me about a particular poem of mine, and seemed to wonder, rightly, why my reading of it didn’t acknowledge or account for the spacing of/in the poem? I figured that question was a statement and you were right. Philip’s theater is this fragmentation of the sentence and the word, where every fragmentation is also an augmentation, bespeaking multiplicity.

FRED MOTENBacklog 2
The commitment to repair is how a refusal to represent terror redoubles the logic of representation. The refusal of our ongoing afterlife can only ever replicate a worn-out grammar. The event remains, in the depths. The event-remains are deep and we stand before them, to express them, as their expression.

FRED MOTENBacklog
I didn’t stop logging, I just stopped posting. I think I got waterlogged from not being able not to try to get too deep. I got into some kind of double trouble from blowing bubbles, I guess. Anyway, here’s some more stuff, along the lines I promised, though I might want to make another promise now. The other thing is that this is driven by the chance to see some of Hong-An Truong’s film and installation work and from reading Gerald Barrax’s poetry and from a friend sending me the catalog from the Xenakis exhibit at the Drawing Center in New York. I just wanted to mention these not in order to provide the key to what I’ve been trying to write but just to commend them all to you because they are beautiful! As is Beth at the Jordan Lake School of the Arts, refuge for the new X-Men, where the superkids go to play. OK: back to my misbegotten ideas on poetics, in approximately 300 word installments.

@Kent: The thing that confuses me is the way most poetry blogs contain…little poetry. Here at Harriet, that’s normal – this is not a ‘personal’ poetry blog but a discussion room and (for me) education centre. But on the blogs of so many poets…no pomes. Are the things so hard to come by? Valuable, yes, but a poet is wealthy with the things, notebooks running empty, mystery scrawls everywhere. More poems on poetry blogs today!
PG

Did it ever occur to anyone on Onan:Harriet that there were other poems out there beside the ones that bloggers write themselves? Has anyone noticed the Robert Burns that just got posted by Travis, for example — who is obviously still sensitive to our criticism here at Scarriet that, since we left, nobody at Harriet talks about poetry anymore, just about themselves?

Check out the 3 Comments on that thread for a shock on that, how they ignore the poetry to show off what they know/don’t know about Salinger. Even Holden Caulfield could have done better!

And can you imagine what Thomas Brady would have had to say, Burns being one of his favorite poets? Or Christopher Woodman on how to pronounce the scots, his children having been to a one-room school house in the hills up above Dumfries? Their dialect became so broad he couldn’t understand them in the kitchen after they had walked home from school, he says, two miles in the gloaming. His daughter Sophia even won 1st prize in the annual Robert Burns Poetry Contest — she recited the master’s poetry by heart even better than the shepherd children, who still spoke the dialect.

Eskdalemuir 1969, he says. The end of the world.

But then that’s precisely why Christopher Woodman got banned, for talking that way. Hi-jacking, Travis would have called it had Christopher come in on his Robert Burns thread. Making it relevant, we would say, empowering the poetry to speak for itself, not for the brown-nosed poetaster.

And we say good point in your sage comment, Kent Johnson. You know your Burns even if you’re deaf to his poetry and have no interest whatever in the best move Travis Nichols ever made. Indeed, you’ve condemned yet another Harriet thread to oblivion in your comment — set the mood for more cynical blather.

Frankly, we agree with those deletions — the deleted comments were too raw, the authors not ready yet for hanging out such linen. Indeed, some of the deletions were of comments by quite well-known U.K. female poetry figures who were letting too much hair down, and needed protection — from themselves!

Sensitive editing we’d say that time, Travis, and we feel sure that Annie Finch herself must have been consulted.

Was Annie Finch consulted when you deleted Christopher Woodman over and over again, Travis, and finally banned him altogether for talking about poetry in a manner you and your friends found threatening?

Did you learn anything at all from the Burns either? Do you have any feeling for what it might have been like for Holden Caulfield to be banned from his school, and why he might have brought that particular poem out into the real world with him?

Today on Blog:Harriet, November 1st, 2009, marks The 60th day After the Banning of Thomas Brady, Desmond Swords, Alan Cordle and Christopher Woodman. To commemorate the occasion, we take the opportunity to examine the only thread in that period that has attracted more than a handful of desultory comments, and that is Kenneth Goldsmith’s rip-roaring, The Digerati Strike Back with a staggering 55 Comments!

But don’t expect much about poetry, as even the posters themselves acknowledge it’s just shoveling, and because they are Travis Nichols‘ friends and colleagues, they’re obviously proud just to snip, snap and snuggle. Because that’s how you comment if you’re really on the ‘in’ in the poetry establishment, unlike Thomas Brady, Desmond Swords or Christopher Woodman who actually read and write it, or Alan Cordle, so passionate and well-informed on the ethical and social issues, and a well-trained librarian.

But no passion please, we’re Blog:Harriet — no risk, no commitment, no challenge, no outrage or devotion, no Annie Finches, no Martin Earls, no Eileen Myles, no one who posts poems because they actually love them like Catherine Halley, or poets they would like to understand better like Joel Brouwer, and who give others both the space and the encouragement to explore difficult subjects in depth. Excellent Contributing Writers, and there are still some of those left, deserve better respondents — not just cynics and academics and a handful of groupies, insiders and glad-handers.

How sad, and nobody at The Foundation seems to care that Harriet is vacant. I guess that’s the way the Management likes it, though how that serves Ruth B. Lilly’s larger mission remains to be seen!

International Poetry Incarnation,
The Original Program,
The Royal Albert Hall, June 11th, 1965,
Smoking Permitted.

I certainly don’t see a problem, and I second Thomas’s drift in this comment. The thread is about open space, cornfield, Nebraska style space. Thomas has a point. You read what you want to read. Volume can only be stimulating, especially when the discourse is conducted at such a high level. I’m sure this is exactly what Ms. Lilly had in mind, free and open forums which grow organically. Any given post can sustain pointed commentary for only so long before drift, meta-commentary, opinion, personal ideology and the gifts of individual experience begin to take hold. I, for one, feel extremely lucky, as one of the hired perpetrators these last few months that the threads unfold the way they do. Maybe Gary has a point – some people could be scared away by the clobbering breadth of the most enthusiastic threaders. But perhaps not. I suspect a lot of people are reading just for the fun of it, for the spectacle, without necessarily feeling the need to contribute. And I’ve seen enough examples of people, late in the day, breaking in without any trepidation. Thomas has brought up a lot of good points here about the way things are supposed to work. And I would say, having observed this process over the last six months, that, given the lawlessness, there has always been a sense of decorum, even decorum threaded into the syntax of insult (a wonderful thing to see). We are all at a very lucky moment in the progress of letters. A kind of 18th century vibrancy is again the order of the day. We should all thank the circumstances that have led to this moment. We should drink a lot of coffee and get to work.

BAMA PANEL III: Indeed, Denise Levertov is increasingly appalled…

The third in a series of 5 articles on the 1984 University of Alabama Poetry Conference by THOMAS BRADY.

Denise Levertov

A perception of Wallace Stevens as participant in the “common life” was all Helen Vendler had in her defense against Louis Simpson’s charge that she (Helen Vendler) was a living embodiment of the staus quo. Vendler’s “aim in life,” she said, was to “change the status quo,” and the example she produced in Alabama that morning was that she was on a life-long quest to find some way to convince people that tubby Wallace Stevens was not a wealthy, racist snob who wrote show-offy, goofball verse. (Good luck with that, professor Vendler. You might want to check out William Logan’s review of the new ‘Selected Stevens’ in this month’s New Criterion.)

Charles Bernstein, with his back against the wall, finally…after a ‘Stern’ grilling…named… T.S Eliot.

BAMA PANEL II: Foetry covered up in leaves, Vendler style.

The second in a series of 5 articles on the 1984 University of Alabama Poetry Conference by THOMAS BRADY.

..Helen Vendler,…………Louis Simpson,…….Simpson, Vendler and Bernstein

There were more fireworks at Hank Lazer’s 1984 Tuscaloosa Conference.

The distinguished poet Louis Simpson, steely, feet-on-the-ground, World War Two veteran, rebuked panelist Helen Vendler’s attempt to take the high road above the foetic mire.

Simpson to Vendler: “The status quo. If the establishment ever spoke, it would say exactly, I’m sorry, what you just said.”

What did Vendler say to elicit this response?

Vendler was obviously taken aback by Simpson’s remark. She had just addressed what she termed the panel’s “ill feelings” (especially those of Bernstein’s) with a long speech.

Simpson’s reply must have felt like a slap in the face.

The distinguished poet Louis Simpson was like knight royal at the conference; he was the only male U.K. member, rather elderly, and he was also the best poet there.

In her speech, Vendler, the plumpish bird of Keats/Stevens plumage, played her ‘Tenured Queen of the Criticism Priesthood’ card, obviously an attempt to 1) restore order to the proceedings, 2) give dignity to the proceedings, 3) soothe hurt feelings as a mother might and 4) impress everyone.

Simpson’s remark was so wounding that all Helen of Harvard could make in the way of reply was that she had worked hard all her life to make people realize Wallace Stevens was no snob, but a real man, and…and…if that wasn’t using the High Road of Criticism to challenge the status quo, then, what was?

Simpson, silent and unmoved, must have thought to himself, ‘Wallace Stevens? Is that all you’ve got?’

All Bernstein had was T.S. Eliot.

Now all Vendler had was Wallace Stevens.

O O O O that Official Verse Culture-

It’s so elegant

So intelligent

Vendler began her speech by juxtaposing the practice of high and beautiful Criticism with the practice of low and necessary Reviewing.

Contemporary reviewing, like the game of love, was bound to make people unhappy; rejected by a lover because you are not a beautiful blonde, rejected by a tenure committee because you are not Helen Vendler, rejected by a prize committee because you are not Jorie Graham, are just parts of life and it’s best not to nurse grudges and throw stones at tenure committees and call them old fogies because, dear Charles, you just have to be patient, OK, sweetie? What really matters is how we feel about the dead, with all personal jealousies and animosties removed, time and death fostering a love of what is true.

Foetry covered up in leaves, Vendler style.

“When we are all safely dead…”

“Temporary abrasiveness between prize committees & reviewers and the poets they’re judging or giving prizes to shouldn’t be confused with differences between poetry & criticism.”

BAMA PANEL I: Charles Bernstein does NOT name the ‘Official Poetry Policemen.’

The first in a series of 5 articles on the 1984 University of Alabama Poetry Conference by THOMAS BRADY.

Charles Bernstein, Gerald Stern, and T.S.Eliot.

Gerald Stern: “Names…of the policemen.”

If this October 20, 1984 panel discussion had taken place in London or Paris, or one of America’s major universities, it might have struck a mythic chord in American Letters. If poetry mattered more to the American public, we might still be discussing the poetry session which took place 25 years ago this month.

Helen Vendler, Marjorie Perloff, Charles Bernstein, Denise Levertov, Kenneth Burke, Louis Simpson, David Ignatow and Gerald Stern put on a show in sleepy Tuscaloosa, as post-modernism faced off against modernism in a throat-ripping dog fight

Modern poetry’s factions exploded in the flesh, as po-biz insiders erupted in a spontaneous public quarrel.

The more dignified members of the panel probably regret their trip to U. Alabama in those controversial days of the 1980s culture wars. I’m guessing most of the participants would prefer this conference be forgotten, but we at Scarriet would hate to miss an opportunity to see big players like Helen (of Coy) Vendler and (Prince) Charles Bernstein naked.

We want to thank Annie Finch for finding the transcript of the panel discussion–we would have missed it otherwise.

Scarriet will do a series of posts on the ‘Bama Panel, as we observe its 25th anniversary. There’s too much great stuff here for just one post.

So here we are back in 1984. When asked a bland question by the conference host:

“What do you perceive the function of poetry to be, Charles?”

Bernstein, the unemployed ex-editor of the magazine, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, quickly got himself in a foetic tangle:

“[it] has to do with audiences, distribution, jobs, professional networks, things like that, which I think we tend to underrate. It seems interesting to me that professional academic poets are making this particular issue apparent in this context…”

“I think it’s unfair not to realize that it’s actually poets who are the policemen of official verse culture in the United States. And so from the perspective of a poet outside the academy and from the perspective of many people that I know who are not associated with academics, cannot get teaching jobs…”

Iowa Poetry Workshop teacher and poet Gerald Stern broke in:

“I don’t think you’re right, Charles. Who? What poets are the policemen? Would you like to name some poets who are the policemen?”

This was the defining moment of Bernstein’s career. Had Bernstein “named names,” backing up his claim that ‘policemen poets’ were oppressively enforcing ‘official verse culture,’ he might never have found a job in academia.

Bernstein replied, “Yeah, I’ll give you a group, I’ll give you a group.”

Stern: I’ve got the names of thirty-seven hard, fast Communists in the State Department…McCarthy never named one…

Hank Lazer, ‘Bama host, and friend of Bernstein, attempted to smooth things over by leading the discussion back to the ‘function of poetry’ question. Lazer must have been thinking: ‘My conference is going to destroy the career of my friend!’

But Stern wouldn’t quit: “Would you tell me who the policemen are, please, Charles? Would you give me a list of names?”

Bernstein answered foetically: “Yeah, I’m talking about those poets who are involved in the award networks, the creative writing programs, and the major reviews.”

Charles Bernstein was explicitly talking foetry 20 years before Cordle and Foetry.com.

The only difference between Cordle and Bernstein was Bernstein was not naming names–and not naming names was, to the poet Gerald Stern, an even worse McCarthyist offense.

Stern had won the Lamont Poetry Selection 7 years prior, when Stern was 52: judges Alan Dugan, Phil Levine, and Charles Wright. Doors had obviously opened for Stern since then, leading to his job at Iowa, and his invitation to this conference.

Did Stern think Bernstein was going to name Dugan, Levine, and Wright? Who did Stern think Bernstein was going to name? Who did Bernstein have in mind back there in 1984?

In the end, after more McCarthyism talk from Stern, Bernstein saved his career and meekly mentioned one poet, a dead one:

T.S. Eliot.

Bernstein used another dead poet to save himself:

“I would give you as a central instance the person that William Carlos Williams called the great disaster for our letters, T.S. Eliot…”

Bernstein made a non-answer.

Eliot’s “officalizing role” as a poet is a truism.

Everyone knows Williams and Eliot shared many mutual friends, including Pound. Williams and Eliot both gained credentials by their accentuated differences: Williams’ obscure career was made to seem more ‘popularly American,’ while Eliot was assured high-brow points in the comparison to the Jersey scribbler. The whole matter is the very opposite of the played-out platitude in the po-biz press. Rather than shedding crocodile tears for Williams, was Bernstein instead playing on the opposition between revolutionary secular Jew and conservative Christian? This is more likely.

To the Eliot v. Willams charade, Ignatow said, “You’re right there.”

Bernstein: “Thank you.”

Indeed.

End of Part I.

Part II will examine Helen Vendler’s role in the same 1984 panel.STAY TUNED…